Artist Growth Wants To Make Your Next Tour Smarter

The Artist Growth team is Jonathan Sexton, Joey Dempster, Matt Urmy, and Jacob Jones.
Singer-songwriter Matt Urmy was touring a lot in 2010 and 2011, often with his Knoxville buddy Jonathan Sexton. Sometimes they were joined by Nashville-based artist Jacob Jones, and the three friends billed themselves as the Rollin Highway Review.
Urmy says he had taken a few years off after his son was born, but then hit the road again “with a whole new focus and determination, as you can imagine.”
The musicians were sharing notes about touring—discussing resources and tools for touring musicians—when they hatched a plan for a better solution for managing a musician’s career on the road.
In July 2011, Urmy and Sexton began building a web and mobile platform for touring artists and their teams called Artist Growth. The product was designed to keep track of merchandise, scheduling, contacts, and promotional efforts.
Before Artist Growth launched in January 2012, there weren’t many solutions for keeping track of things on the road.
“The really organized people are using Google Docs and spreadsheets,” says Urmy. “Others are using legal pads, or not doing anything.”
(A company called Eventric handles tour logistics through mobile and web applications for clients ranging from Zac Brown Band and Dave Matthews Band to emerging artists.)
Artist Growth soon started talking to managers and record labels in Nashville and elsewhere about their new product.
“From the managers and labels, there was a little bit of concern early on that they would feel like we were trying to digitally... Sign In to Keep Reading